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Stories from SlatePets With Problemshttp://www.slate.com/articles/arts_and_life/science/2011/10/spaying_and_neutering_does_it_cause_depression_in_cats_and_dogs_.html
<p>Not even PETA objects to cutting the testicles off a cat. For decades, pet owners have been taking their companion animals for genital snips and other forms of ungendering, with the laudable goal of reducing the number of unwanted offspring and staving off unpleasant behavior around the house. Animal welfare organizations concur, neutered pets are less likely to escape and roam the neighborhood, get hit by a car, or scent mark the furniture. Spayed females don’t go into yowling heat or bleeding estrous, and have a reduced risk of breast cancer. A male without gonads has zero risk of the various diseases that afflict them. There’s hardly any controversy over the unsexing of America’s cats and dogs: According to an <a href="http://avmajournals.avma.org/doi/abs/10.2460/javma.238.7.898">epidemiological study published in April</a>, something like four-fifths of the former and two-thirds of the latter have been spayed or neutered. But how does it feel for the animals? Could losing its genitals make your cat a little blue?</p>
<p>Studies show if you remove a woman’s ovaries for medical reasons, you increase her risk of anxiety and depression. The gradual decreases in hormone levels that come with aging can cause mood swings, but going from youthful levels to neuter levels overnight seems to be even worse. The Mayo Clinic studied more than 600 Minnesotan ladies who had both ovaries surgically removed before menopause, and found they had an <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18724263">increased risk of being diagnosed with depression or anxiety</a> in later life. Men whose testicles are amputated, or who receive another form of <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18952456">androgen deprivation therapy</a> for the treatment of cancer, may also be at increased risk for mood disorders.</p>
<p>None of that should be surprising. Sex hormones are known to interact with the brain in complex ways, and estrogen and androgen receptors in the hippocampus and amygdala seem to <a href="http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v31/n6/full/1301067a.html">regulate mood</a>. Since spaying and neutering can change a pet’s behavior—that’s a big part of why we do it—it’s fair to wonder whether the surgery might also affect an animal’s mental or emotional state. Neutered people are prone to depression. Why wouldn’t a spayed cat feel the same?</p>
<p>The best available evidence on this question comes from mice and rats. Cheryl Frye at SUNY-Albany has been investigating sex hormone effects on the rodent brain for almost two decades. As a stand-in for humans, her group has either spayed female mice or let them age to mouse menopause, then asked, essentially, how do they “feel.” According to Frye, in the absence of sex hormones there is “a modest but consistent” increase in anxious and depressive behavior.</p>
<p>How do you measure anxiety in a rodent? Mice like dark spaces and corners but are also foragers, driven to explore. What’s called “anxiety-like behavior” is measured by exploiting the balance between these drives. If you put a mouse in a plus-shaped maze with two of the arms covered, how long will she spend exploring the open arms? There are <a href="http://scientopia.org/blogs/scicurious/2010/08/25/back-to-basics-3-depression-post-3/">other tests</a> to show whether a mouse has &quot;depression-like&quot; symptoms. The gold standard, called the “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAHANMLNPjE&amp;">forced swim</a>,” test was developed in France in 1977, and measures how long it takes a mouse to stop trying to escape from a beaker of water. The more time it takes for the mouse to go limp, the less “depressed” she is. In a dry version called the tail suspension test, a mouse is held upside down by the tail and researchers see how long it takes for her to stop struggling. The mood-boosting effects of most commercial antidepressants were first discovered using these behavioral assays of squirming mice.</p>
<p>So how does unsexing surgery affect a mouse's mental state? Frye’s lab, and others, have shown that mice without ovaries often refuse to explore the plus maze, and fail the sink-or-swim test. Similar results were shown in <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030645301100093X">neutered male rats</a>, and a few studies found a biological correlate of rat and mouse depression—<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X10002102">reduced neuronal growth in the hippocampus</a>—in the brains of gonadectomized rodents.</p>
<p>Related work has been done in non-human primates. For a small study in <em>Brain and Behavioral Research</em>, researchers removed the ovaries of some Japanese macaques at a National Primate Research Center in Beaverton, Ore., where hundreds of females live in close contact with their mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and female cousins. Researchers reasoned these snow monkeys could model mood changes due to ovariectomy without confounding variables like the social stigma of barrenness that might affect women. The center picked 10 females of equivalent rank in the dominance hierarchies and removed the ovaries and uterus from five of them. The other five had their “tubes tied,” so were sterile but still had intact ovaries. Since the monkeys wouldn’t understand the biological ramifications of surgery, and would have similar social lives, any difference between the two groups could be attributed to ovarian hormones.</p>
<p>During an annual corralling of the monkeys three years after surgery, the authors noted that spayed monkeys ate and drank more, and groomed and had sex less—suggesting social impairment and stress. When researchers confronted the monkeys with a black rubber snake, four out of five ovariectomized monkeys backed away and closed their eyes. (The others touched the snake and played with it.) The scientists deemed this odd behavior a “non-adaptive” response to threat and novelty, and concluded that the presence of ovarian hormones keeps female macaques calm and socially engaged<strong>.</strong> Other research on the same Oregon snow monkey troop suggests <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21763405">spaying impacts serotonin levels</a>.</p>
<p>Injecting estrogen or testosterone into lab animals can also affect their apparent mood or emotional state. Brief, small doses of each hormone seem to have antidepressive and anxiolytic effects in <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19429189">rats</a> and <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19804793">aged mice</a>, for example. If having more hormones makes a rodent act like it is on Prozac, then it stands to reason that taking them away altogether might be a downer.</p>
<p>Few researchers have tested this systematically in dogs and cats. In 2006, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16772140">a small study of German shepherds</a> on a Korean Air Force base did show that female dogs without ovaries were more “reactive” than sexually intact ones, meaning they were more likely to bark and growl when a test dog was walked past their kennels. Other studies report an increase in separation anxiety and noise phobias (e.g., fear of thunder or fireworks) in some dogs and shyness in cats after spaying or neutering, particularly if done at an early age.</p>
<p>Of course, disregarding animal psychics, there is no way to decipher the subjective emotional experience of a cat or dog (or even a laboratory mouse). It may offer a dog some relief to see a bitch stroll by and not feel impelled to jump the fence to chase after her, or put less strain on a cat whose spine isn’t forced into <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEb29AFgmwY">arched-back lordosis posture</a> at the whim of estrogen. While they may be groggy from the anesthesia post-op, spayed or neutered pets won’t know they’ve lost the ability to reproduce. They simply won’t feel the desire, or have the capacity, to do so. There’s no reason to think they experience any angst over not passing on their genes, or pine for puppies, or long to hear the clitter-clatter of little claws.</p>
<p>Already millions of strays are euthanized every year, and sex-specific behaviors of pets are too much for most owners to live with. But if mice really do provide a model of psychological distress in humans and across the animal kingdom, perhaps it’s worth considering whether castrating or ovariectomizing your animal could make it prone to anxiety or depression.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the psychiatric medications that were tested in mice but designed for humans are now readily available for both cats and dogs. One pharmaceutical company even markets the antidepressant drug fluoxetine (aka Prozac) in beef-flavor chewables. Its brand name is suggestive: “Reconcile.” </p>Mon, 10 Oct 2011 11:16:27 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/arts_and_life/science/2011/10/spaying_and_neutering_does_it_cause_depression_in_cats_and_dogs_.htmlMadeleine Johnson2011-10-10T11:16:27ZDoes spaying cause depression in dogs and cats?arts_and_lifeSpaying, Neutering, and the Mental Health of Cats and Dogs100111010003petsMadeleine JohnsonSciencehttp://www.slate.com/articles/arts_and_life/science/2011/10/spaying_and_neutering_does_it_cause_depression_in_cats_and_dogs_.htmlfalsefalsefalseDoes spaying and neutering pets make them depressed?<p>Spaying, Neutering, and the Mental Health of Cats and Dogs</p>Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.Love in the Ivy Leaguehttp://www.slate.com/articles/arts_and_life/books/2011/10/the_marriage_plot_reviewed_jeffrey_eugenides_new_novel_explores_.html
<p>For a certain class of readers along the Eastern seaboard, the new Jeffrey Eugenides novel, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374203059/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=slatmaga-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=217145&amp;creative=399373&amp;creativeASIN=0374203059">The Marriage Plot</a></em>, will offer the same pleasures and discomforts as looking into the mirror. The three main characters—Madeleine, Mitchell, and Leonard—are white liberal arts majors at Brown in the early 1980s. Derrida figures largely, as does Cape Cod. The book opens on graduation day, in the manner of <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0043X1FOU/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=slatmaga-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=217145&amp;creative=399373&amp;creativeASIN=B0043X1FOU">St. Elmo's Fire</a></em>, with our protagonists wrapped in the drama of their own becoming: what to do next with their lives, and how to resolve the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2Ii0K77K1k&amp;feature=related">bizarre love triangle</a> they've created.</p>
<p>Eugenides last book was the acclaimed <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312427735/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=slatmaga-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=217145&amp;creative=399369&amp;creativeASIN=0312427735">Middlesex</a>, </em>which appeared nine years ago. I expected him to return and take another whack at the Great American Novel, but <em>The Marriage Plot </em>is not a swing-for-the-fences book. It's sort of the opposite. The character of Madeleine is an exquisitely cheekboned, squash-playing preppy who nerds out on Victorian literature. (A rare bird.) In the book's first section, she stumbles into a lit theory class, where the other students roll their own cigarettes, quote <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801858305/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=slatmaga-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=217145&amp;creative=399369&amp;creativeASIN=0801858305">Of Grammatology</a></em>, and work hard to be epicene. Eugenides uses the rise of lit crit on campus as a foil for the type of novel he's writing in <em>The Marriage Plot</em>: &quot;Almost overnight it became laughable to read writers like Cheever or Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about anally deflowering virgins in eighteenth-century France.&quot;</p>
<p>Eugenides, who attended Brown, writes of lit crit with the cunning details of a former convert. Instead of the &quot;blinky people in her Beowulf seminar,&quot; Madeleine finds herself among a hipper, more jaded set—the semioticians. Lit crit offers a bookish radicalism, but Madeleine becomes a reactionary. She doesn't understand what's so wrong with straight-ahead stories, or the act of simply writing about your mother's suicide, instead of writing about your mother's suicide in a way that attempts to reinvigorate the tired trope of suicide by treating it without emotion (as Peter Handke does in <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590170199/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=slatmaga-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=217145&amp;creative=399369&amp;creativeASIN=1590170199">A Sorrow Beyond Dreams</a></em>). In other words, what's so wrong with writing about young, attractive people searching for love and truth in the manner of early Updike and early Cheever?</p>
<p>It would be easy to recommend <em>The Marriage Plot </em>as a pleasurable but shallow book—a well-produced, HD nostalgia trip. The character of Mitchell, who goes on a post-college spiritual quest to India, and who shares many biographical details with Eugenides, is pleasant but predictable. Some of the scenes feel like photos from a J. Crew catalog brought to life. It's the character of Leonard who complicates this judgment. Madeleine encounters Leonard in the lit crit seminar. He's a hulking, attractive guy who alternates between silence and bursts of intellectual virtuosity. He chews tobacco. He wears a bandanna. He's David Foster Wallace.</p>
<p>How weird. Why would Eugenides so glaringly place a young version of David Foster Wallace in his own novel that champions traditional storytelling? (Eugenides, by the way, <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/interrogation/2011/10/jeffrey_eugenides_interview_the_marriage_plot_and_david_foster_w.html">denies that character&nbsp;was based on Wallace</a>.) DFW's fiction was an experimental, full-brain attempt to capture the totality of American life. The DFW character invites an unflattering comparison: Compared to <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316066524/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=slatmaga-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=217145&amp;creative=399369&amp;creativeASIN=0316066524">Infinite Jest</a></em>, <em>The Marriage Plot&nbsp;</em>reads as a two-dimensional homage to a dated style. But Eugenides, more than any other writer so far, helps answer the question that pains fans of DFW: Why did he kill himself? Why was someone so smart unable to think himself out of depression? Why couldn't he escape?</p>
<p>By giving us a graspable DFW character, Eugenides saves his book and trumpets the merits of his realistic style. Of course there's no real answer to why DFW committed suicide. And those who have suffered depression probably feel there's not a lot to discuss. Depression crushes a person. But as someone who has &quot;felt depressed&quot; but never been actually depressed, I found the character of Leonard fascinating and sad. It gives a little of the plot away to say that after graduation Leonard and Madeleine decide to live together on Cape Cod, where Leonard has a prestigious science fellowship. There, Madeleine, who has always dwelled within the peppy brightness of the upper-middle-class, directly confronts what it's like to love a manic-depressive. When manic, Leonard is the ultimate boyfriend—a more than capable lover, a delightful risktaker. The worst part of his depression, for her, is agonizing about how to bring that side of him back.</p>
<p>Eugenides presents Leonard's case history from Leonard's own perspective. He takes on the imaginative challenge of what it would be like live inside the head of an ambitious manic genius—&quot;a giant comet cruising at a low altitude through the space the rest of us inhabit&quot; as <a href="http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/09/rumination-on-the-life-death-and-particularly-the-legacy-of-a-man-barely-necessary-to-introduce-to-y.html">someone said</a> of David Foster Wallace. This section is still written in third person—no Joycean pyrotechnics here—but it turns out that, in Eugenides' hands, classic realism remains a trusty tool for nailing down mental states, such as mania: &quot;His mind felt like it was fizzing over. Words became other words inside his head, like patterns in a kaleidoscope. He kept making puns. No one understood what he was talking about.&quot; Eugenides also drives home the physical pain of depression:&nbsp;</p>
<p>Let me tell you what happens when a person's clinically depressed . . . What happens is that the brain sends out a signal that it's dying. The depressed brain sends out this signal, and the body receives it, and after a while, the body thinks it's dying too. And then <em>it</em> begins to shut down. That's why depression <em>hurts</em>, Madeleine.</p>
<p>And Eugenides supplies the key insight when Leonard tries to self-regulate his dosage of Lithium and outsmart his therapists, even while being cognizant of his doom: &quot;The smarter you were, the <em>worse </em>it was. The sharper your brain, the more it cut you up.&quot; Intelligence blocks all the easy roads to normalcy. He's always gauging what the patients and doctors are thinking and then recalibrating his own statements based on what he knows their next action is likely to be. And then he further recalibrates his behavior based on the knowledge that the doctor and patients probably know that he, Leonard, knows what they are thinking. Leonard plots four moves ahead yet remains stuck, a tortuous feedback loop of frustration.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Mitchell is helping out Mother Teresa in Calcutta, pining for Madeleine in his free time. I expect my fellow critics will give a sharp elbow to these sections of the book, but I like how Eugenides portrays the Christians, seekers, surly French medical students, and some dude from Florida, all of whom help themselves by helping lepers. It is a feat to evoke the scriptless nature of trying to &quot;find yourself,&quot; and his touch is comic yet exact. The hardest part isn't really bathing an old man's diseased body but establishing a conception of yourself outside of college, the town that you came from, who you parents are and what they expect you to be. The Mitchell episodes read like a buoyant pop song—recreating the romantic time in a young man's life when you feel destined to marry a particular girl and a Thomas Merton passage can knock you over.</p>
<p>Count me as someone who was taken in by <em>The Marriage Plot</em>. I enjoyed spending time with these familiar people, with their familiar cultural references, and discovering some dark unfamiliarity, too. In the best possible way, it's like reading a long, detailed, acutely observed Alumni Notes in the back of some Ivy college monthly. Ahhh, so that's what happened to that person, that's why they landed the way they did, that's where the story is going. It's only half-true of course, but very entertaining.</p>Mon, 10 Oct 2011 11:15:08 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/arts_and_life/books/2011/10/the_marriage_plot_reviewed_jeffrey_eugenides_new_novel_explores_.htmlMichael Agger2011-10-10T11:15:08ZJeffrey Eugenides explores real depression, not just preppy romance.arts_and_life<em>The Marriage Plot</em> reviewed: Jeffrey Eugenides on love in the Ivy League.100111010002david foster wallacebooksMichael AggerBookshttp://www.slate.com/articles/arts_and_life/books/2011/10/the_marriage_plot_reviewed_jeffrey_eugenides_new_novel_explores_.htmlfalsefalsefalseThe Marriage Plot reviewed: Jeffrey Eugenides on love in the Ivy League.<p><em>The Marriage Plot</em> reviewed: Jeffrey Eugenides on love in the Ivy League.</p>Photograph by Karen Yamuachi/Wikipedia.Jeffrey Eugenides, author of <em>The Marriage Plot</em>Questions for Anjelica Hustonhttp://www.slate.com/articles/arts_and_life/interrogation/2011/09/anjelica_huston_in_50_50_the_oscar_winner_talks_about_memoir_wri.html
<p><strong><em><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2011/09/_50_50_reviewed_joseph_gordon_levitt_and_seth_rogen_as_pals_vs_s.html">Read Slate’s review of Huston’s new movie, 50/50</a>.</em> <em><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2011/09/_50_50_reviewed_joseph_gordon_levitt_and_seth_rogen_as_pals_vs_s.html"></a></em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em></em></strong>Anjelica Huston is cold. She’s calling me from the overly air-conditioned New York set of <em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1825133/">Smash</a></em>, a TV show slated to debut next year, in which Huston is a Broadway producer who’s interested in signing on to a new musical about Marilyn Monroe. Her distinctive husky voice is sweeter than it usually is when she’s in character—after all, she’s best known for playing <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000069I1U/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=213381&amp;creative=390973&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=B000069I1U&amp;adid=1DHTK0RK1JGDFPFXQAFB">sociopathic grifters</a> or <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/movies/28darj.html?pagewanted=all">emotionally remote mystics</a>—and she makes a joke about how she can’t understand why buildings are always freezing when we have global warming. “It’s mad!” she laughs, then graciously asks me how I am.</p>
<p>She channels some of this real-life warmth into the new movie <em>50/50</em>. Huston plays the mother of a cancer-stricken Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The movie is based on the real-life story of writer and producer Will Reiser. It’s a small role, but Huston makes the most of it by injecting her scenes with genuine pathos. Her character might be domineering and meddling—but she’s also dealing with a son who might die and a husband with Alzheimer's. The audience never stops empathizing with her.</p>
<p><strong><em>Slate</em></strong> spoke to Huston about the dearth of roles for older women in Hollywood (even the fabulous Anjelica has trouble getting good scripts!), the books she’d like to develop for TV, and her forthcoming memoir.</p>
<p><strong><em>Slate</em></strong>: It was surprising to see you as an average mom, since we’re used to seeing you as these mothers who are ethereal or glamorous or just plain nuts. Was that part of what drew you to the character?</p>
<p><strong>Anjelica Huston</strong>: I think you just sort of hit the nail on the head. She’s Everymom. She’s middle class, she has a huge task. She’s the caregiver for her husband, who has Alzheimer’s. Her son has been diagnosed with cancer. She’s protective and a little irritating, and a bit overbearing, and at the same time, she’s fierce and loving, and there’s never a question as to whether she’ll be there for him. She’s the kind of woman who, for me, is very powerful in the landscape where women aren’t given much due for the things that they do, and for the roles that they fill. But it’s women like this that kind of make the world go round.</p>
<p><strong><em>Slate</em></strong>: She just seems stretched from all angles.</p>
<p><strong>Huston</strong>: Yeah, she’s pretty stressed out. And that, and the effect of how hospitals are, and the kind of regimentation, and coldness, and clinical discomfort of those situations, bad lighting, all of the things you have to go through when you’re in a hospital and working day to day to help the person you love most in the world to live. It’s a very harsh circumstance. So even though she’s for all intents and purposes a normal woman, an ordinary woman, she’s also extraordinary.</p>
<p><strong><em>Slate</em></strong>: I’ve read how you speak really beautifully and movingly about your own mother’s death when you were still a teenager. You’ve often played mothers of adult children, so what do you draw on when you’re playing these mothers?</p>
<p><strong>Huston:</strong> Women have a lot of capacity for love, for people other than their children, too. So that’s what I draw on. My love of my family, my love of my nieces and nephews, of my own parents, love for my husband.</p>
<p><strong><em>Slate</em></strong>: I know you’ve done a lot of TV work in the past 10 years, and you’re continuing to get work with shows like <em>Smash</em>. There’s a stereotype that it’s easier for women over 40 to find meaty, good roles in television. Has that been your experience? Or are those just the projects that have piqued your interest in the recent past?</p>
<p><strong>Huston</strong>: I think television is a savior for actresses, particularly right now, and I guess actors, too. But there are more meaty, interesting roles for women than ever before on television, which is a good thing, because there are less in film, by the day [laughs], by the hour.</p>
<p><strong><em>Slate</em></strong>: Since you’ve been in the business so long, can you pinpoint the time when things did change for the worse?</p>
<p><strong>Huston</strong>: With female roles, it’s always been difficult. Particularly since one actress gets all the great ones, and the rest of us scurry around to kind of beat each other for the other ones. I’m sick of making excuses for the fact that there are very few good roles for actresses. Over the years I try to be positive. But in the long run, when you really look at it, I think it’s sort of a bit sad, because there are so many women out there, I think, aching to see good work, and to identify and all of that.</p>
<p><strong><em>Slate</em></strong>: Absolutely. And you’d think that women being in positions of power in the studios would help matters, but that doesn’t seem to change anything.</p>
<p><strong>Huston</strong>: Not at all. Not at all. I think they just cast their favorite male stars. But you know, once in a while a great role comes along, and even though it might be a supporting role like this one, it’s a great role, and one that I can really identify with, and sink my teeth into, and explore. But certainly on television there are a lot of great opportunities now for women, and I’m so happy to see my friend Julianna Margulies doing so well in <em>The Good Wife</em>. That’s reassuring.</p>
<p><strong><em>Slate</em></strong>: You directed <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1572526807/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=213381&amp;creative=390973&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=1572526807&amp;adid=1W1M7F95AGD4FNRK2FPA">Bastard out of Carolina</a></em> for TV back in the ‘90s, which I absolutely adored and you had such great source material with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0452287057/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=213381&amp;creative=390973&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=0452287057&amp;adid=1V8AZ9MGAY60PDA76H6G">Dorothy Allison’s novel</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Huston</strong>: Well, thank you.</p>
<p><strong><em>Slate</em></strong>: Are there any other books that you’ve loved recently and want to develop?</p>
<p><strong>Huston</strong>: There are two really wonderful books by the author James Kunstler. One is called <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0802145442/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=213381&amp;creative=390973&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=0802145442&amp;adid=177A5Z05AY4BCR2Q57ZX">The Witch of Hebron</a></em>, and another called <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0802144012/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&amp;camp=213381&amp;creative=390973&amp;linkCode=as4&amp;creativeASIN=0802144012&amp;adid=0CJNYVHM2N0G0Q5VN5CR">World Made by Hand</a></em>, that I’ve been talking to some networks about, so I think they’d be amazing as a mini-series or as a series. Hopefully somebody will recognize their potential, because I think they really would be wonderful.</p>
<p><strong><em>Slate</em></strong>: You’re writing a memoir, which is <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/01/us-books-anjelicahouston-idUSTRE72065G20110301">already hotly anticipated</a>. What’s been the experience of going back through your past?</p>
<p><strong>Huston</strong>: You know, I’m just starting. And it’s one of those things, I don’t really want to talk about it too much because as soon as it’s out of my mouth then it sort of loses its potency. I don’t know how, really what form it’s going to take or how the narrative is going to evolve, so hopefully I’ll be able to answer that question more succinctly in months to come.</p>
<p><strong><em>Slate</em></strong>: It takes a long time to really come up with that narrative that you feel satisfied with when it’s your own life.</p>
<p><strong>Huston</strong>: I think so, yeah. And for some reason the early life is a lot easier than the later life. Probably because one has less judgment on it.</p>
<p><strong><em>Slate</em></strong>: You’ve spoken in the past about your start in film, and how you felt like it was your father the director John Huston’s idea, and it took you a while to come into your own. Do you feel now that you have transcended those early beginnings, and that the decisions you make now are yours as an entity, separate from your family’s storied history?</p>
<p><strong>Huston</strong>: Yeah, um, wow, it’d be pretty sad if I hadn’t at this point [laughing]. Yeah, I make my own decisions now, not that I ever really adapted that well to following along with other people’s decisions as to how I should run my life. I’ve always been a bit obstinate on that score, but, yes, I feel like I’m more the mistress of my decisions now.</p>
<p><em>This interview has been condensed and edited.</em></p>Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:20:58 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/arts_and_life/interrogation/2011/09/anjelica_huston_in_50_50_the_oscar_winner_talks_about_memoir_wri.htmlJessica Grose2011-09-30T11:20:58ZThe Oscar winner talks about memoir writing, roles for women, and her storied family.arts_and_lifeEven Anjelica Huston Doesn’t See Good Parts for Women Over 40100110930103movieswomen in televisionJessica GroseInterrogationhttp://www.slate.com/articles/arts_and_life/interrogation/2011/09/anjelica_huston_in_50_50_the_oscar_winner_talks_about_memoir_wri.htmlfalsefalsefalse<p>Even Anjelica Huston Doesn’t See Good Parts for Women Over 40</p><p>Even Anjelica Huston Doesn’t See Good Parts for Women Over 40</p>Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images.Anjelica Huston